This station asks all Americans listening to offer a prayer to God for the safety and well-being of these brave Americans. Never has such a calamity befallen our military in this magnitude before. May God rescue them and go with them.
Jason Parker sighed heavily, then broke down like a child as he moved to the table radio and slowly turned the dial off. He needed to compose himself for Mary Jane’s sake, for his own. His eyes bled moisture like a tap needing repair, but no repair could fix what he had. All his loves; his wife, his sons, his dreams for them were being systematically destroyed by a cruel and unforgiving world.
He didn’t blame God but he didn’t know how to pray to someone so far away who looked down upon the affairs of men and allowed some to live, others to be taken before their time. But he had no one else to turn to.
He posed the new question of his faith to himself as he stood, back to Mary Jane, face to the wall, peering deeply in the patterned wallpaper as if the answer lay hidden in the design somewhere. He was deaf, dumb, and blind, to how he could help his boys, and mitigate the awful tearing sorrow that had engulfed him and the sweet lady of his boys’ life, Mary Jane.
Maybe this was how it was when God sent angels.. Where would he be now? All alone at the depot. At least one soul, this young woman, gave him someone to talk to, someone to share his grief.
He took in a deep breath and then slowly released it as if to exhale his emotions so colored by the events that had torn his loved ones from his bosom. His only solace was found in that he had loved a woman who gave him these boys and she had loved him in return. At least I have known joy. At least, he sighed.
His innermost mourning became a supplication from deep within the soul, from his heart in words not capable of being formed. It was a father’s prayer for his sons. Did God understand what he felt?
He felt ashamed of the thought, for the day this Sunday represented, even though he celebrated it late, was all about a forsaken son. But that was then … He wanted to feel that God understood his tender concern and abject feelings of abandonment, hopelessness.
“Am I hearing things?” he turned suddenly to Mary Jane. “Did you hear that?”
“What? I didn’t hear anything,” she responded.
“The whistle,” he beamed. “The boys always blew it when they were coming home from a trip somewheres. When I couldn’t go, when my sick wife needed me, they’d blow the whistle to let me know they were almost home.” He beamed. “They’re safe!” he rejoiced, running to the window filled with the rays of early morning light. “They’re okay!” he excitedly exclaimed as he looked out to the tracks. “I can hear the whistle! It’s Lucian’s call. I can hear them! They’re coming home Mary Jane! Dear God in heaven, my boys are coming home!”
CHAPTER 50
“Johnny, we’re setting you down. Just for a minute,” Norman exhaled, heavily sweating from every pore what little moisture was in him from the effort. Pale and dizzy with heat exhaustion, weak from dehydration, face blistered from the scorching sun, Norman needed a breather.
He was down from his normal one hundred and sixty pounds to one hundred and ten. All together he was aware that a few weeks difference were all that separated him from the condition Johnny Mead was in.
“Thanks,” Johnny groaned weakly. His pallor suggested that the stench of death filling the air around them would soon include their tender-aged cousin.
Lucian shook his head bitterly. He still had fight in him. He didn’t know where he was getting it from but he didn’t want to, wouldn’t have surrendered, if it were not for his brother and dying cousin. He was mad at the whole mess, not to mention the fact that a lot of military decisions at the highest level led to this.
When Lucian and Norman Parker were sent on a trip north two months earlier, just ahead of the Japanese advance, to reconnoiter and find existing stores of food supplies that hadn’t yet been recovered from camps and bases along the route, they were turned back my military authorities who had told them they didn’t have the proper authority, the right forms, paperwork.
The idiots who brilliantly turned away their own American men from rescuing foodstuffs were forced to abandon them days later to the advancing enemy. Americans and Filipinos were starving to death by the hundreds every day now.
Now it was survival of the fittest and everyone for himself. Most of the old 200th and 515th were spread out all over the Bataan Peninsula, over on Corregidor, fighting wherever they had been needed. They all served as infantry in the end along with everyone else. But as a cohesive unit they were dead.
Lucian picked up one of the leaflets that were dropped by the Japanese on a bombing raid days before and that were now generously littering the fields and roads. It offered extravagant terms of surrender to any American who turned himself in.
“To all American and Filipino troops,” it read. “It is not a dishonor to surrender. Surrender and you will be treated humanely! Enjoy the comforts of women, good food, the hospitality of the Japanese soldier who understands your courage. Why die for a cause that is lost? Bring this leaflet with you and surrender to the first Japanese soldier you see and live with dignity.”
He spat on the leaflet. “Good for toilet paper and nothing more, Norm,” he said angrily, tossing it away. “They laughingly and indiscriminately kill, torture, rape, and pillage the Filipinos,” he muttered. “We sure as hell are walking into a deathtrap as sure as staying here is one,” he complained.
Norman couldn’t respond. He was drained. He just nodded and panted, trying to gain breath and strength to move ahead with his cousin on the stretcher.
The word was passed along to the thousands of men gathering near the highways, off the roads and in the fields.
“Cease fire will commence officially at noon. You are to wait for the Japanese to accept the surrender. Pile your weapons in one location. It is advisable to follow whatever they ask of us. We are to be considered prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention,” one officer stopped and read from a jeep with a bull-horn every hundred yards or so.
“To hell with you and the Japs!” Lucian obstinately shouted for anyone to hear.
“Johnny! Stay with us Johnny. We’re gonna go for that food! Listen, Johnny,” Lucian whispered as the Japanese soldiers surrounded the several hundred men in the area they had camped in. “These illegitimate yellow scums are gonna make us march north right past where you, me, and Manuelito buried the food. All you got to do is hold on. We’re gonna get some food somehow and hide out in the jungle. Make you better.”
“Ohh, Lucian. I can’t,” he sighed, barely audible as he strained at the mild effort to respond.
“You got to! That’s an order!” Norman countered, weak and dizzy himself from the exercise of carrying the litter with dysentery, constant diarrhea, dehydration.
Malaria attacks would get him soon if he didn’t get some more quinine. Quinine was worth a month’s pay now and hard to find. He slumped under the blazing sun at the screams of the power-hungry Jap guards eager to show their captives what a victorious soldier could do on a whim. Lucian swatted at the flies impatient to eat the deathly ill Johnny Mead alive.
A Japanese soldier with a fixed bayonet attached to a rifle larger than himself, prodded them to their feet and yelled something, pointing his rifle to the stricken cousin.
“We carry,” Lucian said, gesturing as he did.
The smaller Japanese guard reared his rifle butt to Lucian’s jaw, knocking him to the ground and lunged at him with bayonet barely missing his legs.
Norman quickly rolled over to his brother and shielded him from the next thrust. Expecting it to enter his back and end his misery he was stunned to hear the scream coming from Johnny.
The enemy guard forced another bayonet thrust through the chest of the screaming young man, quieting him. He laughed as he removed it, wiping the blood on the trousers of the dead boy.
“I’m gonna kill that son-of-a-bitch,” Norman spit out with considerable struggle as he helped Luc
ian to his feet.
“How?” Lucian bitterly asked. “You can hardly stand. I’ll kill him. I swear, I’ll kill him. Don’t you worry,” he huffed as they both moved to the boy who was lying peacefully for the first time in weeks.
The guard had lost interest in them and had moved on to his next victim, a sick sailor who screamed at the first thrust of the bayonet and was quieted, as was Johnny, on the second.
“They’re murdering scum just like I told ya, Norm,” Lucian grunted angrily. “That Jap is a dead man!” He nodded as the gleeful enemy guard wiped blood from yet another bayonet thrust into a helpless sick American.
“Animals,” Norman groaned, still suffering from dysentery, weakness, malaria. “They aren’t gonna get us, Lucian. We gotta make it out of here. Look at little Johnny,” he cried in a broken voice of a child whose entire world has just been devastated.
The boy from Albuquerque lay still, eyes skyward, mouth agape with an expression that seemed to ask, “Why?”
“I’ll kill him, Lucian. I’ll get better and I’ll find that no good bastard and I’ll kill him,” Norman muttered, mopping at his eyes.
Lucian couldn’t pay attention for the moment. He suffered to ’ regain his wits. He felt his jaw which had received the butt end of the Jap rifle just moments before. He felt inside his bloody mouth and pulled out two teeth. “So much for dental care,” he said sarcastically, bravely. The jolt had about rendered him senseless.
“Lucian, we got to hang onto each other until we figure out how to get to the food. Johnny was a gonner. I’m still gonna kill that lousy Jap for Johnny, but now I need your help,” Norman moaned. “I can’t walk without your help.”
Shots rang out as a group of men started to run into the thickets surrounding the sun-scorched clearing where the hundred men had gathered. Bodies fell. Japanese guards didn’t waste additional bullets. They showed a propensity for the bayonet by using it on each of the half dozen fallen men.
“They’re trying to show who’s boss. Get our attention. I think it’s gonna work,” Lucian finally responded to his weaker brother wiping at the blood oozing from the split lip, broken teeth given him moments earlier. “Come on. Let’s just fall in line. Here, take one of these. We got to conserve water but you’ll need this more than me,” he said, putting the last two salt tablets he had hidden into Norman’s hand. “Drink ‘em down fast,” he added, taking the canteen on his web belt and bringing it to his brother’s lips.
“Grab those dead fellas’ canteens, Lucian,” Norman pointed. “We got to have water.”
Lucian followed his brother’s advice and brought the partially-filled canteens to their spot. “Two apiece,” he said, as he hooked them to each others’ belts.
“We got to bury Johnny,” Norman groaned under the stress of his own sickness.
“We pray for him, brother. That’s all we can do.” They both closed their eyes as Norman prayed first, followed by Lucian.
“I haven’t prayed since I was a boy, Norm.” Lucian wiped at the saltiness stinging his eyes. “I loved that boy,” he offered, still gurgling blood in his throat from the sudden loss of teeth.
Norman raised his canteen with great effort to his trembling brother’s lips. “Take,” he said weakly. “Drink,” he ordered. Lucian obeyed like a small boy, helpless, emotionally wrung out at the loss of control, Johnny, the lives of friends around him.
“Where do you think they’ll be taking us?” Norman groaned, seeking to bring Lucian back into composure.
Lucian picked up a tin helmet someone had discarded and placed it on his sickly brother’s head to shield him from the sun. “The Rock hasn’t surrendered,” he said wiping away tears, washing the grime from his soiled face. “The Japs still have to attack Corregidor across that two miles of Manila Bay from the shore here,” he said, still wiping at his running eyes and nose, drying the blood oozing from his lip with a soiled handkerchief. “They’ll stage it from here for sure. So I figure they’ll move us up to one of the abandoned bases. Probably near a rail-head. Clark Airfield maybe. Maybe Camp O’Donnell. That’s what I’d do in their shoes. If they don’t just decide to kill us on the spot instead.”
“You think they’ll bring trucks? I can’t walk far,” Norman responded dizzily. “I need to ride.”
“I don’t know, Norm,” Lucian reponded under more control. “These guys are swarming in here now that we gave up. Looks like the caravans are all headed in this direction south, not north. I sure hope so.” Lucian picked up a discarded poncho and draped it over the dead body of his cousin. “So long, Johnny,” he said, then standing looked down the dusty road to the growling Jap soldiers coming their way again.
“What do we do with Johnny? Just leave him?” Norman asked again, incredulous that their lives had come to this.
“He’s dead, Norm. I’ll take his dog tags. We can’t do a thing about it unless we stay put for the night. Come night, if we’re still here, maybe we can sneak him off the road to them bushes and bury him with some loose dirt or something. I can’t think what else we can do. I’ll tell ya what, Norm. I’m watching that Jap guard. If he’s even fifty feet alone from another guard tonight, he’s a dead man.”
“Good. I’d kill him, but I …”
“I know. I’ll do it. Don’t worry,” Lucian replied coldly. “They even look like they’re gonna touch you and I swear I kill until I haven’t got an ounce of life in me. I swear.”
The Japanese guard stood proudly before them, intimidating them. His broad grin belied missing front teeth, his cheek a long scar from a battle wound.
“I’ll get this guy. No matter how long it takes. I’ll remember him,” Lucian whispered to Norman as the guard walked on looking for another victim. “He’s a dead man!”
CHAPTER 51
Third Day, Bataan Death March
“God in Heaven,” Norman groaned as they lay in an open field under the blazing sun the third day into their march. “Any water left?” he asked.
Lucian didn’t answer. They were seated next to an artesian spring. “Water spigot and all,” Lucian whispered to himself.
He had just watched a Japanese officer draw his sword from his sheath and behead a young man, delirious for water, who had rushed out of line to the spigot. Now the Japs forbid any of them from filling their canteens.
“You must all obey!” the Japanese officer yelled angrily. “You live because the emperor is gracious to spare you! Any man who does not follow orders exactly will be shot. To surrender is to be worse than a dog. You are cowards. Cowards deserve to die! No more water today!” he screamed and stepped back into his captured American jeep.
The Japanese guards, all uneducated privates, gleefully used the man’s decapitated body for bayonet practice, laughing fiendishly at each thrust.
The scene of wanton murder was hourly. Hundreds who had fallen out of the march were summarily shot or run through.
“Officers, enlisted men, the Jap guards show no stinking defference to anyone, Norm. They killed three officers yesterday for having Jap money. Remember?”
“I heard shots. I can’t remember nothin’ anymore. I can’t make it, Lucian. Just let me die,” Norm moaned.
“One step at a time. They won’t do anything unless we fall out of the march. Just keep hangin’ onto me. I’ll get us some water somehow.”
“Food? We got to have food. We haven’t had anything since we left Mariveles.”
“We are about two kilometers from the last place we buried those canned goods. Two or three cases of fruit and some rations. I’m gonna make a break for it tonight, Norm. We just quietly roll into the underbrush and let them be on their way in the morning. They won’t even miss us.”
“We’ll just get recaptured.”
“Maybe. But we’ll have some food in us by then.”
“How much did you guys bury up ahead?”
“A few cases. Covered it with palms and elephant grass. I remember this spot because of the water spigot. We used it to fill o
ur canteens, and the radiator. That nipa hut over there?” He pointed. “I recall making a mental note. We are close, Norm. Just one step at a time.”
“Okay. One step at a time.”
They continued, dragging one foot ahead of the other. Lucian’s head was aching from the rifle butt he’d received when the Jap soldier killed Johnny. His throat parched, he tried not to think any further than one more step. One, the next, the next, the next …
Norman was delirious, being dragged slowly forward by the sheer determination of his twin. After hours of walking in the merciless hundred-and-ten-degree tropical sun, breathing the dust of the road as parched and dry as their own throats, Lucian stumbled. A hand reached for him then for Norman. From both sides the brothers were helped to their feet.
“Bogan, is that you? I thought you was dead?” Lucian mumbled through swollen lips, his eyes darkened and swollen almost shut by a blow to the face, as he tried to distinguish the man who picked him up. “Who’s this?” he asked pointing to the man holding Norman up on his other side.
“That’s Pedro Villalobos, E Battery. We been together since San Fernando in January.”
“Thank you, Pedro,” he allowed with a dry throaty sound.
“This is where being an Indian from the Southwest comes in handy. Look!” They watched in horror as a young private ran for the filthy ditch water to the side of the dusty road. Full of bloating bodies, animals and men, brown with fecal matter and disease, the young man drank. Another broke ranks until a half dozen found themselves splashing the filthy liquid over them for relief from the sweltering rays of the sun. It was the second day without water and delirium was epidemic among the dying bedraggled prisoners.
“You can’t get like that, Parker. You got to be like an Indian. Take a drink next time we fill up the canteen, swish it around in your mouth and hold it. Let it slowly drain down your throat. No gulps.”
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